


Your smile is not as bright as it used to be

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 04:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11479011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: A different time, a different place, John Silver might make a different decision.





	Your smile is not as bright as it used to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FirenzeSun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FirenzeSun/gifts).



> Filling your fabulous prompt for "Your smile is not as bright as it used to be" XD

The sound of the wind rushes past Silver’s ears, whipping his curls into his face with punishing force. He exhales, his hair beats against his own lips, caught in the stringy bristles of his mustache. The brisk walk, or brisk hop, if you will, has made him breathless. The seagulls circle over his head, narrowing the circumference of their flight as if getting closer and closer to their intended prey. With his luck, they’re going to shit all over his hat. Silver pulls the tricorn tightly down over his brow and presses his crutch into the cobblestones beneath him.

“I thought it was you,” the voice behind him says, and just like that, Silver is breathless again. 

What a fool was he to think he could outrun anyone with two legs, but especially a ghost. Ghosts are not even corporeal. One cannot outrun a phantom from one’s past.

“Same hair, same eyes, same stupid stories about Solomon Little.”

“Same distinctive gait?” Silver’s attempt at levity cuts across his own ears. They seem suddenly exposed and cold, despite the tricorn. His gut lurches, as if he had been flayed and his innards had spilled out onto the ground. At Captain Flint’s feet.

“Your smile is not as bright as it used to be,” says the ghost, and Silver forces himself to turn around to finally face him.

“As with anything, one gets out of practice,” he says, “if one gets out of habit.” 

He wants to smile as he says it too, but his jaw is set too tightly. The corners of his mouth twitch. He tastes only dirt in his mouth, like that day that he and Flint wrestled in the jungle over that gun that neither one of them could shoot in the end. He hasn’t been able to wash that bitter taste out of his mouth in years.

“Some habits are harder to break than others,” Flint says. 

For it is and it isn’t Flint. But Silver dares not call him by that other name, because James McGraw belongs to another. He wants to reach out and run his fingers over the silver streaks at his old captain’s temples, to brush his thumb along the fine lines under his eyes. He wants to kiss the swell of that lower lip as it peeks out from under the russet shade of Flint’s mustache.

“I never got out of the habit of thinking you were my friend,” Flint continues. 

“Nor I,” Silver chokes around the words, a sudden agony now contorting his features into a semblance of a smile. “It’s good to see you again, Captain.”

Flint’s hand, as light as the wing of a bird, flies up and brushes gently against Silver’s cheek bone. “I hope you find your smile again, John,” his breath brushes against Silver’s earlobe like an angel’s sigh, a fleeting dream, gone too quickly.

Silver shuts his eyes and clenches his teeth. His fist clutches the crutch so hard he fears he will either break it or meld with it. There is a string attached to his umbilicus and it pulls at him, tugs at his very core with unbreakable bonds.

“James,” Silver exhales, even though his captain can no longer hear him. “James,” he repeats louder, turning to follow after this ghost from his past. 

He will fight for him. With his claws and his fangs and his forked silver tongue and whatever human attributes that are still left to him. He will spit the dirt out of his mouth and fill it with the sweetness of ambrosia. He will call Flint by his true name and that name will be “Love.” This time around, he won’t let go.


End file.
